The Karachi Zoo, established in 1878, is undergoing a complete revamp. This project started last year as one in a series of projects across the city to improve its parks and public spaces. A team of 8 young, talented, animal empath architects led by Architect Zain Mustafa started developing an animal-centric plan for the Zoo last September 2016.

This masterplan was a consolidation of ideas from 8 world class Zoos design and best practices in the care of captive wild animals. The Zoos that were studied as part of the team’s research were Berlin, Hamburg, San Diego, Singapore, Delhi, London, New York and Brussels.

What the team was looking for was spaces where the animals were not in closed quarters or cages. They wanted Karachi Zoo to have large open enclosures, with wet or dry moats and environments designed as close to the animals natural habitat as possible. They also wanted the Zoos history and heritage as a botanical garden to remain intact with over 200 trees many of which are over 100 years old, some rare and not available anywhere else in the country.

Between September 2016 and January 2018, with several iterations of the concept applied to the masterplan with input from the present Zoo management a presentation was made that gave the team the green signal to start work.

Although, as the team has since evolved and taken on senior zoology experts like Zohare Ali Shariff and horticulture guru Pasha, the core design being driven by Rija Yousuf and Zain Mustafa, the original concept of the Rubics Cube has remained at its core. How can we give these animals the best quality of life, with intellectual stimulation, relief from boredom, a life enrichment program with movable furniture and toys within their new habitats to give them as much comfort to be, as possible. More than anything else, this has been taken on by us as an animal rights rescue operation focussed on the condition of the animals and how to improve that while they are within the boundaries and reality of zoo management limitations.

It is a complex and sensitive design space which requires attention to a variety of detail ranging from a basic uplift of the vintage infrastructure to equal respect shown to the flora, fauna and the human visitors within the overall umbrella of animal-centric design.

Each design decision is whetted by multiple experts and then the work starts on site.

Work on the Bear Enclosure, the first of the animal habitats has begun now that the infrastructure uplift is complete.

In this album are photos of the team at work through the process, the first set of approved 3D conceptual visualisations and the masterplan to give people following the projects development a schematic bird eye view of the direction the Zoo revamp is going in.

It is a project supported personally by Aseefa Bhutto Zardari and CM Murad Ali Shah and generously funded by the Sindh Government.